If you're in the D.C. area, come out to this event tonight at Reason's DC HQ, from 6 to 8pm.

Drinks and light snacks will be served. Event is free and open to the public, but you must RSVP.

Born between 1980 and 2000, the millennial generation dwarfs even the baby-boom generation in numbers and is already fundamentally remaking American politics, culture, and business.

Millennials are widely credited with handing Barack Obama a second term as president, with being socially tolerant and skeptical of government invasions of privacy and personal freedoms, and creating world-changing companies such as Facebook.

Millennials also display an admirable independent streak, with fully one-third refusing to identify as either Democrat or Republican. They are the politically unclaimed generation and how they define their relationship to power will define the next 50 years or more of American life.

The October issue of Reason is devoted to millennials and features articles discussing the rise of "the Hipster Capitalist," the increasingly desperate scramble among parties for the youth vote, the millennial fondness for dystopian fiction and movies such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, and the new language of politics spoken by today's post-partisan youth. This special issue of Reason follows the release of this summer's Reason-Rupe Poll of millennials that was widely discussed in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.

You're invited to join Reason.com's Nick Gillespie and Reason Foundation Polling Director Emily Ekins for a fast-paced, wide-ranging discussion about millennials, what they believe, and how libertarians interested in promoting "free minds and free markets" might best with today's younger generation.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

Americans have no trust for the police force, for reasons which should be obvious to anyone who’s paying attention to the news right now. And while the authors of this article can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to be targeted by the police, or to be a police officer, we do understand how hype works. And myth. And our shitty fucking mass media. And we think that the myth of the police officer — the the things we, as citizens, immediately assume upon seeing someone in uniform — has gotten pretty rotten.

Disconnected is great, provided you are smart enough to reconnect to the right things. I am pretty sure the second part is going to be a problem. It is all well and good to hate both the major parties, except when the reason you hate them is because neither is socialist enough or gives you enough magical free shit.

That will be good only if they also have self reliance and lose their desire to have government solve their problems. Without that, you end up with a bunch of disconnected, angry people looking for in the words of Hayak “someone who can make a plan work”.

My fear is not that the mellenials will become brain dead progs. It is that, since they seem to lack reasoning skills and virtually any knowledge of history, they will have no way to interpret what is happening to them and will go full fascist for the first strong man who comes along and gives them a place to belong and an easy answer to their problems.

Yeah, my concern is that rather than traditional authorities telling young people what to think, it’s basically the Reddit hivemind. If you’ve ever spent any time on Reddit, you should know that this is no cause for optimism.

And Obama made it all worse and continues to make it worse. The Democratic party is about domestic surveillance, criminalizing politics, and endless war. It is who you are. You need to get used to it and start defending it rather than just screaming Bush. Jesus, they send you the talking points on how great the NSA is and how the IRS needs to be used to suppress dissent and how illegal wars are now necessary, use the damn things.